Chapter 3 Chapter Summary

  Ecological economics is developing methods for valuing biodiversity and, in the process, providing arguments for its protection. Benefits humans derive from nature are called ecosystem services. These services can be described and quantified in terms of their use value.

  Direct use values are assigned to products harvested from the wild, such as timber, fuelwood, fish, wild animals, edible plants, and medicinal plants. Direct use values can be further divided into consumptive use values (for products that are used locally) and productive use values (for products harvested in the wild and later sold in markets).

  Indirect use values can be assigned to aspects of biodiversity that provide economic benefits to people but are not harvested during their use. Nonconsumptive use values include ecosystem productivity, protection of soil and water resources, positive interactions of wild species with commercial crops, and regulation of climate. Biodiversity also provides value to recreation, education, and ecotourism activities.

  The option value of biodiversity is its potential to provide future benefits to human society, such as new medicines, industrial products, and crops. Biodiversity also has existence value, which is the amount of money people and their governments are willing to pay to protect species and ecosystems without any plans for their direct or indirect use.

  Environmental ethics appeals to religious and secular value systems to justify preserving biodiversity. The most central ethical argument asserts that people must protect species and other aspects of biodiversity because they have intrinsic value, unrelated to human needs. Further, biodiversity must be protected because human well-being is linked to a healthy and intact environment.